King Rat (film)

King Rat is a 1965 American war film written and directed by Bryan Forbes and starring George Segal and James Fox. They play Corporal King and Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, respectively, two World War II prisoners of war in a squalid camp in Singapore. Among the supporting cast are John Mills and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted from James Clavell's novel King Rat (1962), which in turn is partly based on Clavell's experiences as a POW at Changi Prison in Singapore in the latter part of the Second World War.

Plot
Corporal King is an anomaly in the Japanese prison camp. One of only a handful of Americans amongst the British and Australian inmates, he thrives through his conniving and black market enterprises, while others, nearly all of higher rank, struggle to survive sickness and starvation while trying to retain their civilized standards. King recruits upper class British RAF officer Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe to act as a translator. As they become acquainted, Marlowe comes to like the man and appreciate his cunning. King respects Marlowe, but his attitude is otherwise ambiguous; when Marlowe is injured, King obtains expensive medicines to save Marlowe's gangrenous arm from amputation, but, despite the fact he stays by the sick man's bedside, it is unclear whether he does so out of friendship or because Marlowe is the only one who knows where the proceeds from King's latest and most profitable venture are hidden.

However, the lower-class, seemingly incorruptible British Provost, Lieutenant Grey has only contempt for the American and does his best to bring him down. Then Grey has to deal with an unrelated dilemma when he accidentally discovers that the high-ranking officer in charge of the meagre food rations has been stealing. He rejects a bribe and zealously takes the matter to Colonel George Smedley-Taylor. To his dismay, Smedley-Taylor tells him the corrupt officer and his assistant have merely been relieved of their duties and orders him to forget all about it. Grey accuses Smedley-Taylor of being in on the scheme, but the tampered weight he presented to the Colonel as evidence has been replaced, so he no longer has proof of the crime. Smedley-Taylor offers to promote him to acting captain. When a troubled Grey does not respond, Smedley-Taylor takes his silence as consent.

King starts breeding rats and selling the meat to British officers, telling them it is mouse-deer. When a pet dog is put down for killing a chicken, King has it cooked and he and his friends secretly eat it. Although they protest when they discover the origin of the meat, they ultimately relish it. The stakes are raised when they acquire a diamond to sell. The Japanese commander reads a scroll while a junior officer translates for the senior British officers, informing them that the Japanese have surrendered and the war is over. The prisoners celebrate – all except King: he realizes he is no longer the de facto ruler of the camp. King manages to squelch a premature attempt by resentful underling First Sergeant Max to reassert his rank and authority, but that only delays the inevitable.

Weaver, a lone British paratrooper appears from seemingly nowhere, walks up to the prison gates and fires a revolver in the air; the guards surrender. When Weaver attempts to talk with the Prisoners of War, most of them are in almost a state of shock, with King being the only one who responds to him. Though King is polite and deferential, Weaver almost immediately becomes suspicious of his clean and healthy appearance compared to the other prisoners and promises not to forget him. When Marlowe speaks to him before King's departure from the camp, King belittles their friendship, saying "you worked for me, and I paid you." The Americans are put on a truck. Marlowe rushes to say goodbye to King, but is too late and the truck drives off. Grey remarks that it was "our lot (the British working class) that threw Churchill out," and declares, "We'll be running things from now on," indicating that the end of the war marks the beginning of a new political order.

Cast
Richard Dawson appears near the end of the film as Captain Weaver, a paratrooper who is sent ahead to claim the prison from the Japanese, as the war has ended. An American sergeant (Mickey Simpson) rounds up the Americans to send them home.

Production
Bryan Forbes was offered the job of writing the script and directing by James Woolf. Forbes called Clavell's novel "stunning" but said "Faced with the task of condensing its 400 pages into screenplay form, I stripped away those portions of the novel I did not wholeheartedly admire (mostly the introduction of native girls which, though possibly authentic, belonged to the realm of Dorothy Lamour) and posed one single question: how did men survive under such conditions? It is my most complex screenplay, with little action and mostly concerned with the interplay of character." The film was shot in Los Angeles as new head of production Mike Frankovich wanted to show he was opposed to "runaway productions". A ranch was discovered at Thousand Oaks that was turned into the camp.

Forbes said he and Woolf had a battle with Columbia "who were adamant that we should employ a variety of middle-aged Americans" in the film. He and Woolf arranged it that "in return for employing every resident British actor in Hollywood on the SAG list, we were allowed to import a quota from England." Forbes said the British actors "were selected for their slimness as well as their acting talents and asked to stay on a strict diet until their roles were completed."

Forbes said Columbia's suggestions for the title role included Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, James Garner, and Burt Lancaster, but he felt these would "have made nonsense for Clavell's novel" and he insisted on George Segal. The director also insisted on black and white photography. Forbes later called making the film: "A watershed in my professional life, a unique experience I am unlikely to repeat. I was being paid to create something I passionately believed in with the absolute minimum of interference and the maximum loyalty and co-operation of studio, cast and crew alike. I learnt a great deal from that American crew and however fortunate I am in the future, the situation will never be quite as perfect again. It was a hard, physical film to make, not without its moments of despair and indeed desperation, but at the end of the sixty-two shooting days I was so affected I could scarcely talk for fear of breaking down."

The movie previewed poorly and led to Forbes deleting some scenes, and toning down anti-religious passages.

Awards
Burnett Guffey was nominated for Academy Awards for Cinematography, and Robert Emmet Smith and Frank Tuttle for Art Direction.

Reception
Forbes was unhappy with what he felt was a misleading ad campaign. He said the film "made little or no impression in America, although it was given long and impressive reviews by the top-line critics — but I remain convinced that whatever chance it had was thrown away by run-of-the-mill and basically dishonest exploitation. Now it has become a cult film on the university campuses, but in 1965 when it was first shown Vietnam was still a clean war, and the American mass audiences were unlikely to take kindly to such a cynical view of human behaviour. It had no happy or heroic ending and said some unpopular things about the American dream. The real audience, the audience for whom it was intended, stayed away."

He later clarified the film "proved to be a success everywhere but in America, at one time playing in four cinemas simultaneously on the Champs-Elysées. "

John Mills wrote the film "showed how unpredictable this funny old business can be. It was a wonderful script, a great cast and one of the best directorial jobs Bryan Forbes has ever done... Everybody loved the picture but it wasn’t a success. The only thing I can put it down to is that there was no gorgeous, glamorous girl, no love interest."

The film has been praised for its realism and cinematography. Moreover, Segal's performance has been cited as one of the strongest of his career.

Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote "The film (King Rat) is dexterously made. It is also meretricious, imitative, thematically muddy'. Kauffmann went on to praise the performances in the movie, especially James Fox's.

However, Clavell later said "my feeling is the film failed because Forbes took away the story thread and made it a composite of character studies".